


Better Off In A Pine Box

by NeverMournBlackOmne



Category: Wynonna Earp - Fandom
Genre: F/M, M/M, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-05
Updated: 2019-04-05
Packaged: 2020-01-05 07:44:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,482
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18361646
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NeverMournBlackOmne/pseuds/NeverMournBlackOmne
Summary: Wyndoc, wyndolliday if you squint, slight AU, before the rise of Clootie, Wynonna hasn't asked for Doc’s ring yet, but the baby has already been born and taken away.Major character death.Do you like to be sad? Doc gets shot and people say words.





	Better Off In A Pine Box

Wynonna leaned against the bar, a rare earnestness on her face. Doc was wiping down the bar after closing, the now dry rag just an excuse to keep his distance from her. She slid off her barstool and sashayed around the corner of the bar to position herself right in front of him.  
“Doc…” He couldn’t prevent himself from glancing up at her or the smile her presence elicited. Their eyes locked and the careful words she had been planning died on her lips.  
“How have you been since…” his voice trailed off but they both knew what “since” referred to. This time she was the one who wanted to put distance between them. She returned to her previous perch at the corner of the bar and he followed her there. Usually the silence between them was comfortable, but not today. There was too much left unsaid between them. So she said the first thing that came to mind.  
“When you died…before. When I was gone…Dolls said that…” she too trailed off. What had started out as a distraction from a question she didn’t want to answer became a question she didn’t even know how to ask. How does one ask someone if that someone has an intimate acquaintance with the reality of hell. She was dying to know if Doc had been to hell when Dolls had shot him. His words at the showdown with the widows seemed to imply he'd gone to heaven, but maybe that was just another one of his pretty lies.  
A shadow crossed his face, but Wynonna could tell he wouldn’t answer her.  
“You haven't answered MY question.” He said in the slow Southern drawl that he always accentuated when he wanted something from her.  
Before she could open her mouth, the door opened. The swirl of air drew the attention of both Wynonna and Doc. Rosita entered the bar with a sawed off shotgun in her hands already cocked. Clocking the positions off the only two occupants she drew a bead on Wynonna.  
“Make your peace, Wynonna,” she said.  
“Now, now, ladies.” Doc said as he vaulted over the bar to stand between them. He held up his hands placatingly. But Rosita didn’t even pause. Her finger was already on the trigger. She motioned him to step aside with a shake of her head and eyed Wynonna over his shoulder. She moved the shotgun a fraction to avoid hitting him and to aim for Wynonna’s center mass. Doc took this as confirmation of her intent not to harm him and moved in front of Wynonna again.  
“Rosita, darlin’ it doesn’t have to be like this.”  
“I’m not here for you, step aside.” Rosita said.  
“Fuck, this!” Wynonna said as she pushed in front of Doc. “Now you listen to me, you crazy bitch. Forget my promises. I’m going to put a hole in your head right now!” She raised Peacemaker and cocked it in one motion.  
Doc turned his back on Rosita to grab Wynonna’s arm and spoil her aim as Rosita pulled the trigger. The recoil kicked her back a step and Doc spun Wynonna around and stepped in front of the bullet. The impact drove him forward a step and he heard a second shot. He felt the white hot pain again in his back as he fell forward. Doc’s body collided with Wynonna, momentarily blocking her gun. His momentum propelled him onto the floor where he landed with a thud. Wynonna’s scream was incoherent as she hit the trigger and recooked the gun twice more sending three bullets between Rosita’s eyes. Wynonna let the gun clatter to the ground without even a second look at Rosita’s descent into hell. She turned immediately to Doc’s prostrate body, falling to her knees and rolling him gently onto his back.  
“Doc! Doc! Hang on I’m calling for help!” She fumbled for the phone she’d tucked into her boot. It clattered out of her hands onto the floor and skittered out of reach. She chased after it on her hands and knees, eventually capturing it. She hit Dolls’ speed dial and speaker phone at the same time, letting the phone fall to the floor so she could turn her full attention to Doc.  
His hands were covered in blood but lay limply at his sides. His breath came in short gasps and his eyes were unfocused. She pressed down hard on the wound in his torso, judging the shoulder injury to be of lesser import. He groaned aloud at the contact, weakly trying to brush off her hands.  
“Wynonna…” he murmured. She leaned in to hear him.  
“I’m here,” she said.  
“Dolls…is a good man. He will watch out for…Waverley. Let him help you.” Wynonna shook her head vigorously.  
“Don’t talk like that. Modern medicine can fix this like nothing.” The tears in her eyes belied her words.  
“Wynonna…” his hands moved again and she thought he was trying to clasp her hand. She stilled his hand with hers. He gave it a squeeze but pulled away. With effort he brought up his other hand and struggled to remove the silver and red ring from his finger. “Wynonna, take it.” He pressed the ring into her hand and let his hands fall back to the floor. He exhaled sharply, “Wynonna, It has been a genuine privilege” he couldn’t lift her hand to his lips to kiss her knuckle so he just pressed her hands to his heart, capturing them both with the ring in between them. “Wynonna…I…”  
She pulled her hands from his to press harder on the wound eliciting a groan. Her eyes filled with tears for hurting him, but she wasn’t ready to hear the words she knew he was about to say.

Xavier listens to the exchange stoically. His expression never changing he floored the accelerator and reached a truly unsafe speed. He knew that he would be too late. He was always too late. Too late for Maldito and too late for this. It felt almost preordained how every time something important happened he was too many steps behind.  
Wynonna must have dropped the phone because she didn’t speak to him again, but he heard the low groans of Doc and the shaking sobs of Wynonna with a sinking heart. He willed the truck to go faster.

“Dolls will be here any second with the EMTs and everything will be fine.” Wynonna said in a high voice unlike her own. She threw the now soaked bar rag to the floor and whipped off her scarf to press against his injury. There was a quickly growing pool of blood under his body and his face was deathly pale. His eyes rolled back into his head and Wynonna had to shake him back to consciousness. “Don't you die on me you son of bitch! You said you were all in! So fight God dammit, fight!”  
“Wynonna…” his voice was thin and reedy but he seemed to be focusing his eyes on her. Wynonna knew that she no longer had the luxury of putting off the confession he seemed determined to give.  
“I’m here.”  
“Wynonna, since I laid on eyes on you somethings been running through my mind…”  
“Is this a pick up line?” Wynonna tried to joke.  
“I’ve been practicing this…shush” his voice was barely a whisper. “I had a whole speech prepared, but it seems to have slipped my mind. There was going to be poetry.”  
“Hey, it doesn’t matter. You don’t need to say anything.” She laid her head on his chest. She had given up trying to staunch the blood. He was barely bleeding now. She laid a hand on his cheek. How long they stayed that way she couldn’t say. The time was counted only in the shaking breaths that Doc was able to draw, each one more shallow than the last. She let her head slide forward until her face was buried in his neck. There was a particular spot behind his ear, she gave it a light kiss, but stayed where she was to breathe in the reality of him.  
“Wynonna,” he whispered into her hair. “I love you.” She waited frantically for his chest to rise after his words. And it did, imperceptibly. Four times and then five.  
“”God,”” she thought, “”I am such a coward.”” She sat up to look him in the eyes the words on her lips but his face was slack with empty eyes staring at the ceiling. 

Wynonna cries increased in volume reaching an almost hysterical pitch. Dolls could take no more and he hit the end call button on his phone. He threw the phone into the floorboard hearing the crack of impact with satisfaction. Knowing that Wynonna could not inadvertently hear him, he let the tears come.

 

The door banged open, drawing no one’s attention. Doll’s boots stirred the dust of the bar room floor as he hurried to the two huddled figures. He fell to his knees beside them taking Wynonna’s hands entwined with Doc’s into his own. Facing her across the prone body he let his head fall forward until his forehead touched hers. His hands tightened on hers and he felt the loose ring on her finger. He opened his eyes to see Doc’s ring on her thumb.  
The EMTs barged into the room with a rolling gurney in a flurry of sound. Pushing Dolls and Wynonna aside they heaved the unresistant body onto the stretcher. They ripped open his shirt to reveal the wound Wynonna had been afraid to look at. It no longer gushed blood but oozed a thick dark blood that boded no good. 

 

Wynonna chased after them refusing to let Doc out of her sight. Dolls stood alone, a puddle of blood at his feet.

 

 

A few minutes later Dolls burst into the waiting room of the hospital. Wynonna sat in one of the olive green chairs slumped down looking vacantly at the ground. His entrance didn’t penetrate her reverie. He fell into the chair beside her to wait. 

Hours or minutes later a doctor appeared at the door. “Wynonna Earp?” The doctor stared at them in the empty waiting room. They both rise. “Wynonna Earp? You are listed on the patient’s next of kin form.” It was a statement and a question at the same time. But Wynonna didn’t respond. She simply continued looking at him with that same blank stare. “I’m sorry, but there’s nothing we can do. He signed a do not resuscitate order.” She continued to stare blankly. “He was momentarily revived by defibrillation in the ambulance before we knew of his do not resuscitate order, but he’s slipping away. Would you like to come see him?”  
She was walking out the door before he finished the question. The doctor rushed to catch up with her.  
“This way.” The doctor said. He discreetly took her arm to steer her the right way and led her to the room but she stopped dead in the doorway. She honestly hadn’t know until now if she was walking to his room to say goodby or if she was going to try to find some way to keep walking so that none of this would be real. But seeing him there in the bed, hatless, tore at her heart and her feet carried her to his bedside wether she wanted to go or not.  
There was another olive green chair by the bed but she didn’t want to sit. Truth be told she wanted to run out of the room and never look back. She reached tentatively for his hand and found it cold to the touch. She brought the back of his hand to her mouth to kiss tenderly as he had done to her so many times before and she cursed herself for a fool even as she did so. She knew she had missed her chance to tell him while he still lived, but if there was a God maybe he could still hear her. Maybe he was just waiting for her to say the words. But her throat was locked up and no words came. She stared at him transfixed and watched his chest rise slowly and languidly in half breaths. She couldn’t keep looking at him. Her eyes strayed to the window. The blinds were closed. Her eyes darted around the room searching for anything to eliminate the reality of the situation. She saw the hospital telephone and realized Waverley had no idea what had happened. Someone would have to call Waverley. Someone would have to tell Jeremy. And that someone was her. The old Wynonna would have been gone a year ago. The new Wynonna that stayed would have to be the one to call Waverley and Jeremy. And the new Wynonna wasn’t the type to leave words unsaid that needed to be said, whether they would be heard or not. She straightened her back and tossed her hair over her shoulder.  
Wynonna leaned over and pressed a kiss to his forehead, brushing his long hair out of his face. His ridiculous hair and his ridiculous mustache stood out in stark contrast to the paleness of his skin. He looked almost serene. His struggle to breath seemed to be over. She squeezed his hand.  
“I love you.”  
A strident beeping noise filled the room along with a pack of nurses and doctors. She let his hand slip from hers and left the room to find Dolls.

 

In the waiting room Dolls was surrounded by Waverley and Nicole and Jeremy. They shared an awkward group hug instigated by Jeremy before Waverley started asking questions.  
“What happened?”  
“I don’t know.” Dolls answered. I was at the shooting range waiting for Wynonna when she called me. All she said was that Doc had been shot. When I got there there was no time to talk. It looked like he’d been hit with a shotgun. Two shots upper shoulder and lower sternum. It’s bad Waverley. Real bad.”  
Waverley stepped into his arms again and he held her tight. He could feel the sobs shaking her body, but she made no sound. Jeremy laid a comforting hand on her back but they all remained silent.  
They looked with expectation at Wynonna on her return. She had no words of comfort for them. She had no words to convey what had happened. But they weren't needed. Waverley rushed into Wynonna’s arms and Wynonna held her as she cried.  
Dolls stood by Jeremy as the two women clung to each other. He could feel the sob building up in his chest. He couldn't believe that Doc Holliday was gone. He thought he would have more time. He thought they would have more time. More time to find a solution to the problem of the ring. Just …more time.


End file.
